Alejandro Escovedo has explored so many musical paths over the last 30-plus years that, when describing his work, it’s hard to know where to begin.

He’s an incredibly versatile artist who gives new meaning to the oft-overused term “eclectic” — he’s navigated the musically disparate waters of alt-country, chamber pop, hard rock and pulverizing punk with equal passion, integrity and skill.

The music he cranked out with his first band, the Nuns, was essentially a brawling collision between the Stooges and the Velvet Underground.

“We were way more about Detroit and New York; we didn't care much about English punk,” recalled Escovedo when I interviewed him for The Ann Arbor News a few years ago. Indeed, a staple of his live show is a raucous (is there any other kind?) cover of the Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog.”

He later went on to form Rank and File, a band that helped ignite the 1980s cowpunk movement that in turn spawned the alt-country scene in the 1990s. He followed up with a stint in the brass-knuckled rock crew the True Believers before launching his solo career in the the early 1990s. (He's also part of Latino-rock's “royal family” — his brothers Pete and Coke Escovedo were in Santana, and his niece is percussionist Sheila E.)

Escovedo, who comes to The Ark on Monday, sometimes tours with his rock orchestra — an ensemble that mingles a rock band with a string quintet. He’s also employed that chamber-rock sound on a few of his albums — a sound that’s a stirring alchemy of mournful strings and rippling guitars. Most recently, he explored that fusion on “The Boxing Mirror,” in 2006 — when he recruited John Cale of the Velvets to produce, given Cale’s “modern-classical” approach to incorporating strings with guitars.

For his Ark show, he’ll be fronting a 4-piece band.

And as a songwriter, Escovedo has always had a gift for digging deep into human frailty, or the more gripping aspects of the human condition, as evidenced by the cathartic songs he wrote for his first two solo albums in the early 1990s, "Gravity" and "Thirteen Years" — some of which dealt with his feelings about his estranged wife’s 1991 suicide.

The music on his latest album, “Real Animal,” is more gritty, visceral and harder-rocking. The songs almost read as an autobiography, as they trace Escovedo’s life, career and the sometimes diverging musical paths he pursued over the years.

One of the most gripping songs on “Real Animal” is “People (We’re Only Going to Live So Long),” which addressed Escovedo’s sense of mortality following two separate near-death experiences earlier this decade due to complications from Hepatitis C, a premature aging disease brought on by Interferon treatments and cirrhosis of the liver. (He had previously documented his hard-drinking ways with 1990s-era album titles like "Bourbonitis Blues" and "A Man Under the Influence" — he’d become a heavy drinker after his wife’s death.)

After those harrowing experiences, Escovedo took a long time off from touring and recording to focus on regaining his health. He has credited his recovery to the treatment by a Tibetan doctor, his embrace of Buddhist spirituality and giving up drinking.

The songs on “Real Animal” bounce around chronologically, but they cover virtually every phase of Escovedo’s musical journey. The song “Nuns” recounts that era, and self-deprecatingly refers to that that group as “a bunch of misfits,” whose music was more influential than successful. And one of the standout tracks is the blistering “Real as an Animal,” which is, in part, an homage to the Stooges. “It’s not only about Iggy (Pop), but also that rock n’ roll ferocity and animalistic need to survive, and the instinctual tactics you need to survive — especially being a rock ‘n’ roll musician on the road,” said Escovedo in an interview for his latest record label bio. “I never lose sight of the goal that I have of creating something from that.”

Escovedo’s near-fatal illnesses were clearly a wake-up call — and inspired a flurry of musical activity after his recovery. He followed “Real Animal” with a live EP, and in his recent live shows he’s been performing songs from an upcoming album.

“Without those (health issues), I don’t know if I would’ve done as much as I’ve done since then — post-C,” Escovedo recently told the Press Democrat in Santa Rosa, California. “I’ve been more active. I’ve been clearer. I’ve been more focused. I think I made the best album of my life.

“The Tibetans have a way of looking at it, and some Buddhists believe that everyone should have a near-death experience — to find the true value of life and the relationship of life and death. Death is just part of life. Because of that, I have a lot less fear of those kinds of things than I used to. So it’s easier for me to write things like my last album and not have a sense of attachment to it.”

PREVIEW Alejandro Escovedo Who: Acclaimed eclectic, Texas-based rocker. What: Ambitious commingling of rough hewn alt-country, sophisticated chamber pop and primal punk rock. Where: The Ark, 316 South Main Street, Ann Arbor When: Monday, January 11, 8 p.m. How much: $20. Details: 734-761-1800; The Ark web site.

Kevin Ransom is a free-lance writer who covers music for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at KevinRansom10@aol.com.